Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-09-25
DAILY HERALD.
CHEAP LIVING.
How to Make Both Ends Meet for
Ten Cents u Day.

How to Make Roth Ends Meet for
Ten Cents a Day.
At the gathering of scientists in Co.
lumbia college, learned professor
fascinated his superintelectual hear
ers by telling him that laboring man
"needs daily one-fourth pound of pro-
teine, one-fourthl pound fat, and a
pound of carbohydrates" to keep him
well and strong. If the knowledge
seeking laborer goes to the store for his
four ounces of proteine his experiment
will scarcely increase his faith in the
marketing knowledge of scientists.
What the laborer and what most of us
need more than technical essays on
the physiological and Fecundary
Economy of Good" is plain talk
about sensible feeding and economical
marketing.
GLOW to Live and Thrive on a Dime
per Day" may stand as text for this
talk. 1t certainly can be done, and,
though the experiment may be unin-
viting, it is certain that good health is
nearer akin to the simplest diet than
to the costliest.
Now as to the laboring man and his
problems. Tell him that three-fourths
of his weight is water, and to restore
the days waste he has to take food
three-fourths of which must be water
and the remainder flesh, forming
heat-giving and bone-making sub
stances, and he will understand the
case better. Give him a table OF
foods, analysed, to show just how
much heat -givin :, flesh-forming and
mineral matter there is in each food,
and he will soon take as deep an in
terast in what he eats because OF its
worth to him as because of his taste.
When he finds out-as he can in half
an hour-that only "a parts of every
100 of butchers meat count as flesh
formers, the rest being water, but
that from rs to 80 parts out of 100 in
dried peas, beans, oat and wheat
meals and cheese aref nutritious, and
only 10 to 25 parts waste water, he
from that moment begins to use his
common sense in feeding, as he does
in earning his living. The popular
rule is, never pay any heed to the
feeding value of our diet; let us culti-
vate a glorious ignorance of the pur-
pose of foods, and go in might and
main for palate-ticklers, and devil
take the dyspepsia! Pity he doesn't.
Thus fact or two as appetizers. The
great Peninsular and Oriental (the p.
end o. Steamship company employ
East Indian coolies to do the hardest
work on their steamers because they
are stronger, healthier and stand the
climate better than Englishmen, and
because-not being meat eaters-their
diet only costs 6 cents per day. There
are miners in the English coal pits,
the hardest workers in the land, who
have not eaten any kind of meat for
years. am not'a vegetarian, because
/ banker after the flesh pots, and their
savory odors cast spell over my in
nocent soul; yet l experimental for
one whole year without eating flesh or
gravy in any form, and all the time
my health was perfect and my weight
increased. The dock porters of Con-
stantinople carry heavy burdens, $50
pounds and upwards, more easily than
the laborers OF England or America,
yet their main diet is bread and figs,
and yet they are teetotal and vegeta-
rian. The laborers in Spain live
chiefly on bread and onions and are
marvelously strong.
The flesh and blood superstition is
quite as baseless in diet as in theolo-
gy. A horse is almost as strong,
swift, healthy and handsome as a
two-legged man, and they both have
the same internal machinery; the one
eats beef and enjoys dyspepsia, the
other avoids it and flourishes. Ten
cents worth of wheat, oatmeal, rice,
fruits, buttermilk, bread, cheese,
onions, or portions of several Of these,
will enable man to do his ordinary
DAYS work at least as well as any
other assortment of foods he can buy
for a dollar.
What would be a good diet for
those who do not need to study their
purses yet who would like simple,
healthy and enjoyable dietry? To
such I would say drop the heavy meat
breakfast right away. Not that meat
is bad, but it is not the best to start
the day on. 1t distends the stomach,
indisposes us for head work and often
leads to that other downright mis-
chievous stupidity, the IL o'clock beer
or cocktail. The second evil is taken
to cure the first, as if two black eyes
are better than one. Bread (not the
spoiled white stuff, but the natural
dark colored wheat as ground), tea or
cocoa, eggs and the hundred and one
non-hesh dishes, with little fish and
as much fruit as you like. That's a
model meal, as experience will prove.
Talking of fish, the more the better.
Pound for pound, it is as nutritious as
flesh, though it dosen't seem to fill us
as fully, and its chemical value is far
above that of meats. When l have
extra hard brain work to do, say an
average of twelve or fourteen hours
for two or three weeks at a stretch, 1
knock off meats entirely and eat all
the fish I can. Result: perfect health
and strength and no headaches.
For dinner, fish soups, Il am not
excluding meat, though soups can be
made without it that taste just the
same and are quite as good every way,
puddings, dessert. If any one cares
to prove for himself how little the
flesh dishes on his dinner table are
necessary to him, let him just reverse
the courses, beginning with the fruit,
then cheese and crackers, the pud-
dings, etc. warrant he will turn up
his nose at the meat when he comes
to it, end he won't miss it the least.
knew an eminent lady who for
forty years had never tasted meat;
She was a marvel of mental and
physical strength. Another author
friend kept his health and his average
weight of 100 pounds on diet that
never included meat, the average cost
of his food being only &c per day
Another, a well-known literary man,
who looked as beefy as a butcher
was, when last 1 met him, in his
eighth year of strict abstinence from
flesh. Another friend, hard liter
ary worker, has been practically 6